


all the upstairs windows of every lovers' lane

by vaec (aosc)



Series: If You Wait [3]
Category: Naruto
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-26
Updated: 2014-10-26
Packaged: 2018-02-22 18:36:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2517734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aosc/pseuds/vaec
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sasuke is a concept, an archaic force, and he breathes Naruto's name, biblical, and it's impossible not to be pulled down with him. An undercurrent, a free fall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all the upstairs windows of every lovers' lane

**Author's Note:**

> wow. just mindless mush/fluff/goo ahead. seriously. what. i just needed a break from all their angsting, okay. the timeline is of the _if you wait_ -verse, i guess situated somewhere a few months post _la belle epoque_. quick, dirty and unbeta'd. title from a poem by marjorie hawksworth.

* * *

 

The slant of bright morning light will always add empathetic value to someone's curved cheekbone, but it is unprecedented on Sasuke's, Naruto thinks. He is not a sleeper, only in fits, but when it comes to him at dawn and stretches to early morning post-mission it is uninterrupted and peaceful. Today it is, his eyes move restlessly beneath dusty eyelids, his fingers are a loose curl around a kunai underneath his pillow, and he is sleeping face towards exit, back snugly pressed against the wall. It is a little contrary to peaceful sleep, but it is a shinobi's sleep. Measured breaths, chords of scar tissue illuminated in the light and shadow, never lost in sleep that is closer to wake than it is to dream.

 

Naruto tears himself from the sight in the gape of the doorway, somehow a suctioning space pulling at his breath. They're not entirely okay, but in the equation of Naruto and Sasuke there has always been a measure of breathlessness, an edge, and they have never once managed a satisfactory settle. He supposes it is -- not okay, but enough. A dull knife, a sharp spark. As long as they never get complacent Naruto thinks that they need a little unsettle to their relationship. He does know that Konoha is the home Sasuke will possibly never acknowledge, but, in the span of things, he kisses Naruto with slow heat and wears his hitai-ate with the same ease that he once did revenge and darkness, and just like everything else with Sasuke the littler visible acknowledgements span larger behind the scenes.

 

He makes egg rolls with miso braised tuna and negi, and heats up tea water. He thinks of his mother and thinks that she'd be proud of him eating his vegetables, cooking. It pangs his heart a little, but above all, it is with love. He loses himself in the thought of her thick hair, a plait of dizzying red, a ghost, kissing his forehead with cold breeze. And his father, just the once, in the midst of warfare and loss a solid presence of old, putting his palm on Naruto's shoulder and squeezing. It temporarily rips his roots up to splay on the surface, but it is one of his most treasured memories. His family then, never really an actual unit, but they were his _parents_. And then his family now. Team 7. His Academy yearmates. Iruka-sensei. Konoha. Sasuke, somehow, _always_.

 

"Naruto." It wakes him from thought, halfway piling food on plates, frozen in the momentum. Naruto looks up, catching the roughness in Sasuke's voice, sleep in its baritones, and he won't lie to himself about the effect it has on him, a coil of heat branded low in his belly. He doesn't reply, so after a while comes "dead last," insistent, now a little annoyed, as though Naruto is slow to catch on to him.

 

He hums, sliding a plate across the kitchen island towards his teammate. "Yeah, jerk, save your thanks for after breakfast -- " There is a soft rustle of breath and fabric, padding feet across the floor, before Sasuke presses him tightly up against the worktop. His thigh lodges firm between Naruto's, his hair wisps across Naruto's nose, and his chin bumps into Naruto's upper lip -- still an inch taller, broader.

 

They have had this scene mapped out for months: Naruto is flippant, a breathy, incredulous laugh and a hard shove to Sasuke's sternum. Sasuke is jaded eyes, harsh words, tight fingers on Naruto's ribs. It is a cruel twist to the story, and Naruto remembers it vividly in manifolds. But it isn't what they're doing now.

 

Sasuke's fingers splay on Naruto's collar, the callouses and ridges of scar in his palms smoothing out the skin over a collarbone, across the outline of his throat. As a shinobi, this is threatening, a breath of death imminent, but Naruto relaxes into the touch, and twists a hand into Sasuke's hair. One of them could slip a kunai between ribs, or prick a senbon into the base of a spine, and perhaps it is this that roots them firmly in reality. Naruto thinks that, it is this knowledge of what has always been lodged between them, fear and death and revenge and a wrenching _ache_ , which hinders them from exploring the mythic _happily ever after_. Maybe it's also this which sees them through it; the pull and tug of inevitability never seeing them part beyond arm's length.

 

Sasuke's knife twist smile, within an inch of deadly, but still softer than Naruto remembers it ever being, slants his face. "I can hear the cogs in your head grind when you think too hard," he murmurs, "It's a mixture of annoying and sad."

 

"Shut up, you dick," Naruto replies, and presses his knuckles against Sasuke's skull, down, down, and tips his jaw up into the warmth of Sasuke's mouth. They kiss languidly, never more hurried than it need be, and Naruto shudders -- can't hinder it, when they tangle tongues, at Sasuke's white sharp teeth on his bottom lip, his shoulders pressing into Naruto's own. He is figuratively and literally gripping at the edges of his destiny, a tall frame of inevitability standing tangible and real right there, and Naruto can pull at the ends of jagged black hair and tip its throat visible to scrape his teeth down its jugular. Sasuke is a concept, an archaic force, and he breathes Naruto's name, biblical, and it's impossible not to be pulled down with him. An undercurrent, a free fall.

 

They break apart to breathe wetly into each other's mouths. "It's better than fighting," Naruto offers, an observation cutting sharply real into this fictive moment they have. He tilts his head up to catch Sasuke's expression, fleeting at most. Sasuke allows eye contact, his dark eyes unfathomable, always. He strokes the line of Naruto's jaw almost contemplatively. "Maybe it's just a different form," he replies into a stretch of silence.

 

Naruto laughs between where he's moved his teeth towards Sasuke's chin, pressuring a scar. "Sure, since I'll always beat you."

 

Sasuke drops one hands to the low of Naruto's back, and traces a map from his chin to the shell of his ear, up into his hairline with the other, softly. "Never," he whispers.

 

They are never easy together, a conjoined set of differing beliefs and ethics, their friendship is perhaps a most palpable example of suspending disbelief. An utterly human injection of emotion into a fantastical conflict. Naruto kisses Sasuke again, now with slow burn, an afterthought; one's destiny is an inevitability. It is irrepressible, pre-decided. He searches for Sasuke's left hand, and moans into Sasuke's mouth, scratching the center of his palm with blunt nails, tracing a crescent into the skin. Sasuke grunts, catching his wrist and gripping it tight, tight.

 

"It's gone, dead last," he mutters breathlessly. "The mark disappeared." He licks Naruto's bottom lip, color high and starch on the cuts of his cheek bones. It's the most devastating picture Naruto has ever seen, and arousal is so tight in his stomach that he _keens_. "I know," he replies, a rushed whisper. The marks vanished instantly upon contact, a shrill instance of noise and thoughts not his own, a heartbeat too thick and dull to be his own, a rush of chakra blindingly white hot. But he can visualize the sun on his palm, Sasuke's moon, and their destiny. Not so much a destination as a series of events, each of them the constant throughout the other's journey.

 

They have no need for the sentimental value in scars and brands, only the events preceding them.

 

Sasuke breaks apart, and leans his forehead into Naruto's, sucking on air, his gaze never wavering and thick, their palms still curved to fit.


End file.
